OPEN: Cloudreach Event

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone at Skyhold
WHAT: Cloudreach showers bring weird shit.
WHEN: Cloudreach 15 onward
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: For information about the illness, its effects, and its cure, please make sure to also read the OOC Post.

This high in the mountains, snowstorms are to be expected. But this one is large and lingering, hanging over the valley and the fortress for days. In Skyhold, with its eternal spring, the snow becomes rain before it hits the ground, leaving inhabitants and visitors to wade through puddles and mud in the courtyards. In the valley, snow and ice accumulate under cloud cover—and worse, when the clouds finally thin, a whole winter's accumulation of snow begins to melt in the sunlight.

Within a day, the ground is sodden and mucky enough to give the survivors of the Fallow Mire (or Ferelden in general) unpleasant flashbacks, and those who live in tents are issued additional hastily-constructed wooden pallets to raise their floors above the mud. It is worse outside the fortress: streams and rivers have overflowed their banks, rapids run twice as fast as normal, and flash flooding has made even road travel treacherous.

On Cloudreach 17 a mudslide buries the pass into Skyhold from the west, and on the 19th a sheet of snow loosened from a mountainside collapses into the shadowed passage from the east. An Inquisition supply caravan is caught in the latter, scattering wagons and goods across the hillside and leaving a dozen people and horses in need of rescue and medical care.

Healers may find themselves stretched thin, as in addition to the usual rash of blisters and sniffles that come from days of rain and flooding, an illness begins to sweep through Skyhold's ranks from around the 16th onward. It's marked first by climbing fever, then by flashes at the edges of vision—green light and jagged formations that aren't there, beings of light and shadow gathering around people or clustering in corners—and distant voices, coherent for brief moments if you're quiet and still and not trying too hard to listen.

Comments

[qunari]

Bull sees him wobbling over -- impossible to miss, really -- and one arm shifts as Zevran flumps over, leaving him room to curl in comfortably. He barely takes up any room beside the Qunari, though he can feel him shivering.

Well. That's one way of staying warm, anyway. A scarred brow arches.

"Hello to you too."

Concerned as he might be, he still smirks down at the elf like nothing's amiss, like he's just had too much to drink and is a little more loose-limbed than usually. But it's good that he's here. Easier to keep an eye on him that way.

Too much weird shit going around right now for his liking.

[ombranera]

It takes a bit of shifting and rearranging of the blankets around him until he can press his cheek against warm Qunari skin. Ah, bliss. "Hello, Toro."

It's not his smoothest or even most coherent line, but it's monosyllabic and he can manage that much easily enough without too much thought. Or. Wakefulness. But he's not ill. Ill elves cannoth old conversation! He clearly can. "How have you been?"

See? Conversation.

[qunari]

"Me? I've been just fine. You're not looking too perky at the moment, though."

Though it's entirely possible he'd be willing to snuggle up to him in public regardless. He wouldn't put it past him. He's still obviously got whatever's been floating around, and by now Bull's figured out it's not contagious. Whatever it is.

So nothing wrong with keeping him close, one large hand patting against his shoulder under the weight of those blankets. "Sure you shouldn't be taking it easy somewhere?"

[ombranera]

"I am reasonably perky." He mumbles into Bull's shoulder. "An acceptable amount of perk, that is what I have. Anything more is excessive."

Being proud of himself for managing that much through the fog and warmth is probably a sign that his perk is in the negative. That he has a debt of perk. He is owed more than a few perks and has none to spare.

"Is that not what I am doing?" Here is as good as anywhere. No, it's better, because it has Bull.

[qunari]

"What, shuffling around down here like a bird looking for a good nesting spot? Not exactly what I had in mind, no."

And putting on the act is taking energy it really doesn't seem that he has to spare. Still, he could do worse for places to curl up. Bull's not going to make any moves to move him until it seems as though he's well and truly done. Let him soldier on, if it makes him feel any better.

That tenacity is part of his charm, after all.

[ombranera]

"Clearly I have found the best nesting spot of all." As it has Bull, and Bull is one of Zevran's favorite people in or out of bed. Despite the whole spy thing- actually that might be part of the appeal. That familiarity of 'trust but not too much because you might have to kill me/I might have to kill you'.

He'll need to get Bull something nice for Summersday. Perhaps something in dawnstone? He shifts a little more to rest his head against Bull comfortably. "You are warm."

[qunari]

"Usually am. Our blood runs hot up North, they say." He snorts quietly. "Means I get more snugglers in the winter, that's for damn sure."

Much like Zevran is now, in fact. Though there's no complaint there. He just runs a hand idly up and down the elf's back, stroking soothingly through the blanket as he lies there in a slightly-coherent heap.

[ombranera]

"It is the warmth and the massive rack." Zevran wiggles a hand free to reach up and poke one massive, muscular pectoral. Bull is not quite what he would call pillowy- but it makes for a fine pillow all the same. The more Bull strokes his back the heavier Zevran's eyelids become, drooping little by little.

[qunari]

A disgruntled noise results from the poke, frowning down at the little elf crammed in at his side. "Hey. I work hard on those. Lot of strength training," he mutters, not sounding hurt. Not precisely.

"You sure you wouldn't rather just be tucked into bed? Maybe get some pretty maid to pat your forehead with a cool towel."

Not that he doesn't already know that Zevran could well have one of those, if he wanted, but from the look of her? She's not in any better shape than Zevran himself is in.

[ombranera]

"Mhmm. Your hard work is appreciated, they are wonderful. Very strong, very chiseled." The poke becomes an appreciative pat, a weak attempt at a squeeze that Zevran abandons in short order. "Rippling, as I think the words go. You are ripped, yes?"

That is the slang of some.

"Perhaps I wanted you to pat my forehead with a cool towel. Besides. I am more comfortable where I know nothing will happen while I am asleep." Whereas in his room, even with the locked door? It is a fear.

[qunari]

He's got a point there. Unfortunately. That he was taken at all is still something of a sore spot -- defenses that should have been covered, can't happen again, not to anyone -- but he doesn't show it. Just smooths a hand along Zevran's back.

"Just making sure. You go on and nap, then."

The weight against his side is barely noticeable, and it's not as if he was planning on going anywhere for a while.